> In recent weeks TIME'S mail has run in turn to the questions of U. S. isolation v. aid for the Allies, National Defense, the quality of President Roosevelt as a leader in crisis. Gradually the temperature of the comment has mounted and all these questions have tended to merge into one. Herewith representative samples of this churning of reader opinion.--ED.
Churning Opinion
Sirs:
. . . Whether Henry Ford actually said he could produce a thousand planes a day or not, no one can doubt his ability to do so and no one can doubt that he will produce that many or more when he is called upon. I think he typifies the rugged individualists who brought this country into being in the first place. . . .
Ford is not alone in this category either. I am firmly convinced that there are thousands of big men in this country who are just as true to their ideals and just as stanch in their support of democracy and justice, and I say that the time has not yet come when their ability to produce has been, or can be, equaled.
Furthermore, there are hundreds of thousands, yes, millions, of us in lesser places who hold the same ideals and are willing to fight for them, and who are literally itching for the opportunity to demonstrate to ourselves and to the world our ability and our determination to "produce the goods." . . .
JOE LYON JR.
Los Angeles, Calif.
Sirs:
. . . The man who cannot swim is of no use to a drowning person if he jumps in after him, thereby drowning them both.
Militarily speaking, America cannot swim.
We'd better practice up on our swimming lessons before we jump in and try to save anyone.
CHARLES F. MCREYNOLDS
Los Angeles, Calif.
Sirs:
May I call your attention to two practices abroad in the land that seem to me to be very bad for the nation psychologically.
First is the general usage of such terms as Trojan horse, subversive agents, fifth columnists, etc. It occurs to me that none of these carries the full stigma of the old terms spies and traitors. The full impact of feeling of contempt is lost. One might even consider himself smart in being a fifth columnist, but never in being a traitor. . . .
Secondly, I should like to refer to DEFENSE. So much is said about our national defense. This is extremely bad psychology. Emphasis should be placed, rather, on our readiness for offense. Can you show me an instance where defense has ever won anything? If there are not enough examples in current history of offenders being the winners, turn through the pages of all past history and find more than a few isolated examples of defenders ever winning a war. Defense begets inferiority. However virtuous it may be, it certainly does not work out in practical warfare. We should not be the defenders of democracy but the crusaders of freedom; by this I mean we should go out and seek the enemy. . . .
WARREN E. ANDERSON, M.D.
Pensacola, Fla.
Sirs:
. . . News dispatches from Michigan State College, a land-grant college where military training is compulsory, state that 3,700 students have sent a petition to President Roosevelt begging him to keep us out of war and implying that these students won't fight. . . .
I would suggest that Michigan State discontinue the expenditure of funds for military training, engineering, and the manly professions and instead enlarge their department of home economics. Then we could put nice beribboned caps and ruffled aprons on this present dainty generation of college youth and let them be nursemaids for the English and French children who are expected to be evacuated to this country. . . .
FREDERICK R. HOWE
Greenville, Mich.
Sirs:
. . . The President believes that our love of freedom will produce effort, courage, sacrifice, devotion. Are we prepared to turn out a thousand sacrifices, five thousand courageous decisions a day? For without these, all the be tanks, guns and planes we can make will not be prepared -- to strike -- in our defense.
MILES COLLIER
New York City
Sirs:
. . . The American young man of today, I very much regret to say, has no will to win, nor will to fight. His is the "Let George do it" attitude and I have heard more than one young man stoutly maintain that if America enters the war "he will not fight -- not him." These are the modern defenders of America.
Recently I spent a long vacation in one of America's most advertised resorts. There I got a concentrated picture of America's new generation and their attitude toward life. They have no respect for women; they have a shockingly immoral attitude toward them, and while defending America and immoral attitude toward women may not seem analogous, basically they are the same. . . .
All of this generation are perfectly willing to accept the benefits of a democracy and to enjoy its privileges but they have yet to learn that one cannot take without giving.
I firmly believe that wars are Nature's way of getting rid of bad people, and as far as I can see, the young men of America deserve to be shot.
ETHEL H. BARROW
Brooklyn, N. Y.
Sirs:
. . . Twenty-four years of training (in my case) to be a decent citizen, 24 years of being taught by mother, by kindergarten teacher, elementary school, junior high and senior high-school teachers, by junior college professors, by innumerable books, magazines. ... All these were wasted. . . . For not only those who are wounded by bullets, and not only those who are killed, are lost to America. Many of those who come back apparently unharmed will have lost their usefulness to the nation because of attitudes and impulses killed by war. . . .
CHARLES RODMAN PORTER
Baytown, Tex.
Sirs:
Since May 10, I have really begun to understand "Americans" and these are my unfortunate conclusions:
As an individual, what is euphemistically called an "American" is a pathetic compound of immature emotionalism and slobbering womanish sentimentality. The static intellectual adolescence of the "American" and his puerile emotions about right and wrong would be a subject for pity if they were not about to lead to tragedy again. . . .
Grow up, little "American" boys and girls! Grow up and stop playing at adults. And in closing, try to understand, if you can, Oswald Spengler's explanation for this present war:
"Before the Caesar-men, money collapses. The Imperial Age in every culture alike signifies the end of the politics of mind (rationalism) and money. The powers of the blood, unbroken bodily forces, resume their ancient lordship."
EMIL ADLERMANN
New York City
Sirs:
. . . The totalitarian countries regard democracies as effete and doomed, unable to compete with them efficiently, and they are giving good indication in Europe that they are right. We surely can meet their challenge in efficiently producing the machinery of war, but so far there seems to be little evidence that a democracy can provide the personnel for an adequate army. If conscription is not adopted before the enemy is ready to attack, the "last great democracy" will surely disappear from this earth.
E. W. ANDREWS
Seattle, Wash.
Sirs:
The great waves of pessimism that have swept over the United States relative to the future of the world have gotten me very impatient. . . . As far as history is concerned we must remember ten or 20 years is only a second. Napoleon kept Europe in an uproar for 15 years, but ultimately England triumphed by the strangling blockade that she maintained over those years.
NATHAN W. BLANCHARD III
Santa Paula, Calif.
Sirs:
This is a tragic day for thinking Italians and Americans of Italian descent. . . . Mussolini has made a ghastly mistake. What can he hope to gain that will redeem Italy in the eyes of the civilized world? Territory? First-rate standing for Italy? . . . By what fatuous self-hypnotism has he whipped himself and his people into such a false move? . . .
Democracy was cradled in ancient Rome. When Roman democracy lost its purity, that Empire fell. Perhaps this is the beginning of the end for Italy as well--unless the Italian people have the courage to sink their teeth into the fighting arm of their "Sawdust Caesar."
ADELE COMANDINI
Los Angeles, Calif.
Do-Nothing Critique
Sirs:
In your issue of June 17, you say that "Liberals Lewis Mumford and Waldo Frank quit The New Republic after 13 years as contributing editors, criticizing the do-nothing policy of the magazine (although The New Republic afterwards plumped for aid to the Allies)."
This sentence contains two serious errors of fact and one serious omission. . . .
1) The New Republic did not "afterwards" plump for the Allies. We have not changed our policy, which has long been to give the Allies all possible American aid. For this purpose we demanded the modification of the Neutrality Law last year.
2) Frank and Mumford could not have resigned because of our "do-nothing" policy, because they demanded no action that The New Republic was not also demanding. They avoided recommending, for instance, that the U. S. declare war on Germany. Their 13,000 words of dissent were on general philosophical and intellectual grounds, carefully avoiding debate on concrete policy.
3) Your grave omission was not pointing out that the position of contributing editor carries no salary, no duties, and no responsibility for editorial policy. In the past 13 years, Frank and Mumford have visited the office seldom, contributed little to our pages. We hope they will still visit us, shall gladly print their contributions when they write things we feel are worth printing.
BRUCE BLIVEN
Managing Editor
The New Republic
New York City
> All thanks to Editor Bliven for an interpretation of The New Republic's editorial policy. For news of a controversy of editorial opinion on The Nation, see p. 40.--ED.
No Bureaucrat
Sirs: Thanks for the ad. A rebuke for bad reporting (TIME, June 17). Mr. Knudsen did not summarily dismiss the undersigned. He did not say: "Then I won't be seeing much of you."
Instead he smiled at his preoccupation with one of the vital problems which he has to solve and we went on with business, which Mr. Knudsen conducts in a way that makes it a pleasure to be his associate.
No bureaucrat, Mr. Knudsen has none of the mannerisms of one.
ROBERT W. HORTON
Director of Public Relations
The Advisory Commission to the Council of National Defense
Washington, D. C.
> TIME was misinformed about what Mr. Knudsen said, was right about his being earnest and preoccupied. --ED.
Bottom of It All
Sirs : Re sudden rise of the Wendell Willkie star TIME may have a lot more to do with this astronomical phenomenon than appears on the surface.
Personally, I had never heard of Mr. Willkie until TIME interviewed him and put his picture on the cover (I believe) months ago. [July 31, 1939.] Somehow or other that review stuck in my mind as it must have stuck in the rest of the non-political minds of America and when the Presidential question began to be mulled over I guess we all thought of him simultaneously. Maybe it's clairvoyancy -- but you, my dear TIME, are without a doubt at the bottom of it all.
VIRGINIA GENTZ
Corning. N. Y.
> For an account of the spread of the good news about Willkie, see p. 53. Important fact to remember is that it came about mainly through the normal operation of a free and alert press. As people learned about Willkie they liked him. In particular it must be credited to that serious section of the press which over many months saw in Willkie a man with qualifications for making himself felt in a decisive period of U. S. history. With that press, TIME gladly identifies itself. -- ED.
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